The present invention relates to processing promotional items for mailing, and more particularly to preparing checks, coupons or other items related to several different promotions and serially arranging these items to facilitate their bundling prior to mailing.
Consumer product manufacturers routinely engage in promotional activities to encourage the purchase of their products. Among these activities are mass mailings of coupons, checks or other promotional items, either to provide a discount in the form of cash returned to customers for purchasing a particular product, or to encourage purchasers of one product to try another of the manufacturer's products, for example with a discount coupon usable upon purchase of the other product.
Coupons or other documents presented in a form suitable for mailing are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 443,141 (Kittredge) directed to a printed pamphlet including one or more coupons and mailing address information, and U.S. Pat. No. 1,415,596 (McKinnie) directed to an advertising or coupon device that can be folded into an envelope addressed to the customer. A related "alternative value" device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,554 (Pettit), although not in a form suitable for mailing. A single sheet of paper includes a negotiable instrument on one side, and one or more coupons on the other. Use of either the coupon or the negotiable instrument invalidates the other, due to an overlapping arrangement.
The processing of promotions, i.e. providing the appropriate check or discount coupon to the customer as a reward for the initial purchase, involves high volume and labor intensive activity including collection, verification and organization of initial proofs of purchase and related information, preparation of the checks, coupons or other items using preprinted stock provided by the sponsor in connection with the particular promotion, and finally the sorting of individual items based on their mailing destinations.
At any given time, a typical provider of promotion services, is involved with many different promotions of various sponsoring manufacturers. Preprinted forms, when provided by different sponsors, can vary in size and shape, thus creating the need to handle individual promotions separately. This increases handling expense, not only in added labor, but also in the mailing cost, as it is difficult with a single promotion to accumulate a volume of items sufficient to qualify for certain reduced postage rates, e.g. the reduced rate available for mail presorted by zip code of the destination. Manual recombination and sorting of items for multiple promotions would be prohibitively expensive.
Frequently checks or coupons are mailed in envelopes, which involves further costs of material for the envelopes, printing the envelopes and inserting items into the envelopes. These further costs can be avoided by presenting checks in postcard form, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 914,460 (Selden) and in U.S. Pat. No. 1,264,795 (Hill). U.S. Pat. No. 1,374,501 (Greig) discloses a postcard used to arrange a "help wanted" advertisement, with a front face of the postcard including the publisher's address and a stamp location, and the reverse face including the advertisement subject matter heading and space in which to write the advertisement.
As for generating coupons, U.S. Pat. No. 4,723,212 (Mindrum et al) discloses a point of sale computer system for printing redeemable coupons, responsive to sensing the purchase of certain products predesignated to trigger printing coupons for products different than the triggering product. The system includes a store controller and a group of terminals connected to the controller. Also connected to the controller are storage files relating to products, particular coupons, and a log of coupons. At least one of the terminals is connected to a printer which prints coupons in a price bar code format responsive to sensing various triggering products. Bar code information includes value, expiration date, a manufacturer's code and a product family. This information also can be printed on the coupon in human readable form.
While this system addresses certain needs in the retail point of sale environment, and the various printed forms discussed above are satisfactory in particular situations, none of these approaches satisfies the unique needs of administering promotions, particularly when multiple customers and many different promotions are involved.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a means for processing promotions which permits a commingling of items from many different promotions into a single printing stream.
Another object is to provide an apparatus for preparing mailing items for a multiplicity of promotions, utilizing a postcard format of uniform shape and size.
Another object is to provide a means for sorting multiple promotional items from different promotions into a series of bundles or groups for convenient, low cost mailing.
Another object is to provide apparatus for printing pluralities of checks, coupons or other promotional items on single sheets of printing stock, in a predetermined printing sequence such that separation of stacks of printing stock into separate stacks of promotion items, subsequent to printing, forms bundles or stacks of such items arranged to minimize the cost of postage.
Another object is to provide a system for fulfilling customer requests based on a multiplicity of different promotions simultaneously, with means for conveniently auditing the progress of individual promotions.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide a postcard check document printed in a magnetic ink, in which a customer mailing address zip code is printed in a U.S. postal service standard bar code form, and in which certain information pertinent to negotiating the check is printed in a standard magnetically readable character font, with the postal bar code conveniently removable prior to negotiating the check.